From various references I've read, it turns out that the monastery of St Gregory (originally called St Andrew's, but renamed after him who set it up) on the Cælian Hill, where I will be staying while in the Eternal City, is the selfsame monastery where monks from Monte Cassino took refuge when turfed out by the rampaging Lombards, and the very house from which came St Augustine of Canterbury and his little band, who were sent forth by St Gregory to convert the English. Amazing.
In a very real sense, I will be returning to the place of my remote origins - insofar as most of my ancestors (but for an Irishwoman, a Manxman, and a German, all far off on one side of the family tree), Scottish and English, owe their faith in Christ to the labours, fourteen hundred years ago, of those saintly men of God who evangelized the pagan Angles and Saxons.
St Augustine of Canterbury and Companions, pray for us.
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